The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
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The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Movie Review
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a 2018 fantasy film from Disney directed by Lasse Hallstrom and starring Mackenzie Foy. It’s one very mediocre flick.
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“Mother Ginger wants to destroy the Realms!“
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I love fantasy films and especially the Disney ones so of course I was looking forward to it and although I adjusted my expectations after less than stellar reviews, I was still looking forward to at least a decent effort which this movie ultimately simply is not. It’s a mediocre fantasy flick with a messy, very dull plot that never comes alive whatsoever and a bad focus on boring action, characters and plot points in an otherwise cool looking world.
Yes, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms looks absolutely stunning thanks to its superb special effects and gorgeous production design with many stupendous sets. The costumes are also sumptuous. The score’s of course great too and classical. Everything in here sounds and looks phenomenal, but the core itself is too rotten for the audio-visuals to save it.
Mackenzie Foy does deliver a solid performance in the main role, but her character is your typical female protagonist in this film and quite bland as is every single character here. Keira Knightley is too silly as a villain and I just didn’t buy her villainy at all. The mice are overly utilized and I wanted more genuinely interesting characters to root for as the film felt incredibly weakly developed in the characterization department.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms also has a weak dialogue and a particularly bad pacing as the movie’s rather boring for me as it’s too action paced with too little genuine story meat to it. The overall story is as thin as paper and it just goes through the motions with no real effort to connect to the audiences in any meaningful manner.
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So thus it fails emotionally and only as a technical spectacle can this movie be recommended in any way. Otherwise, it’s a bland Disney fairy tale which fails to capture the legacy of its eponymous famous ballet. None of the Disney magic I’d come to expect from the studio was on the table here.
The score, special effects and especially production design are definitely superb in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, but they ultimately couldn’t save the movie from being a bland fairy tale with the Disney magic touch being entirely absent here. The action and story are boring and the characterization is very thin leading to a disappointingly mediocre affair.
